\u201cIf you’re a racist supporter, you are a racist supporter. The idea that you can ban someone from football but they can still go to other sports seems to me to be a mockery.\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\nPhillip Grindell spoke to me, speaking passionately and honestly, about the delicate situation that the sporting world finds itself in, embroiled in a debate about how we can approach the exponentially rising issue of social media abuse.<\/span><\/p>\nGrindell, a former Metropolitan Police detective, runs a company called Defuse. It has been labelled a \u2018troll-hunting agency\u2019 by a few media outlets, and this does partly cover the companies brief, but its main responsibility is to identify any real threats towards its clients and to, in turn, reassure them that they are safe.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI got started in it because of Jo Cox. When Jo Cox was killed, Parliament decided they wanted a bespoke team set up to deal with all the abuse and to stop it from happening again.<\/span><\/p>\n“The assassination of Jo Cox struck right to the heart of parliament. She was known to be a selfless, honest politician who put the needs of those that she represented above herself and her death exposed a hidden truth at the centre of the English Government system.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cMany people were on the receiving end [of online threats and abuse], but just hadn\u2019t chosen to talk about it.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThey almost felt like it was part of the job to get that kind of abuse and so just suck it up and deal with it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cMPs would say to the media \u2018we’re not worried about it\u2019, but inside Parliament, in my office, they’ll be having breakdowns.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cSo there is this complete charade that they can’t be seen to say that it is upsetting them and I think that\u2019s a kind of PR rather than reality.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nIndeed, the issue of online abuse in sport has been known of for a long time, but it is only recently, with the renewed support of the Black Lives Matter campaign, that the topic has been put under the microscope as the leaders of the sporting world look for solutions to protect their players.<\/span><\/p>\nOnly they\u2019re doing it all wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI think one of the problems is the security managers at some of the big football clubs. This area of threat is not their expertise but they’re not seeking external expertise, equally many of the sporting bodies don’t understand it, don’t take it seriously and don’t understand the issues around it.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThey assume that if they get the police involved and there’s a prosecution, people will be deterred or stop but the truth is that going down this route isn\u2019t a way in which you’re going to solve the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIf you take the Ian Wright scenario that happened recently, it took six to eight months for that [court case] to happen and he got nothing for it. Because everyone’s forgotten about it by that point.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u201cSo there needs to be more immediate consequences.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nEmbed from Getty Images<\/a>